


Who Am I?

by Skalidra, theLiterator



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: BDSM, Co-Written, Developing Relationship, Dom/sub, M/M, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-06-07 23:16:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6829270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skalidra/pseuds/Skalidra, https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Objectively, Cisco knows that the two people he's known named 'Harrison Wells' are completely different, apart from looks. Especially since one of them was, in fact, actually a homicidal speedster from a distant future that was only ever masquerading as 'Harrison Wells.' But sometimes the two get mixed up in his head, and the worst part is that he's not sure whether he actually <em>wants</em> Harry to respond like Harrison would have, or whether that would hit far too close to home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Skali: Welcome! So, this is another thing co-written by me and Lit; Flash (TV) universe this time (obviously). This may or may not have been originally written out of spite. These are things I will not confirm. >.> Enjoy!
> 
> Lit: Hey now, all my best fic is written out of spite! Anyway, yes. Cisco. Wells. Things I enjoy writing. ;)

It starts with Cisco noticing that Harry is shooting him little irritated glances. Not _unusual_ , but he’s not doing anything except spinning his chair in circles, and Harry’s never seemed to care about that before. It takes about a minute for him to sync up Harry’s visual daggers with the fact that he’s reaching the end of his lunch, and the bottom of the soda.

So he stops the chair, staring at Harry’s back, and pointedly, _deliberately_ , sucks at the straw. The drink makes an awful slurping sound as it tries to get the last of the drink, and Harry’s shoulders twitch, his head turning, eyes narrowing.

Cisco _grins_.

He spins the chair around in another circle, waits until Harry’s turned his back and gone back to his billboard full of equations he can only mostly understand, and then — not directly facing Harry because that would be too _obvious_ — does it again. Another twitch that he catches when he glances over, and he’s pointedly _not looking_ when Harry turns to glare again. Nope, not even a little. He’s got the remnants of lunch, after all, and those are clearly what he’s focusing on.

He leaves it there that day, slipping the thought of Harry’s reaction to the back of his mind where it can spin, extrapolate, and give him all the facts as he builds a working theory over the next few weeks.

Harry seems to have an irrational hatred of the sound, and that is a _wonderful_ discovery as well as fact number one. Number two is that it doesn’t matter what type of drink it is, whether it’s with a straw or not, or what type of cup it’s in. If he makes that sound, Harry reacts. Sometimes it’s twitching, sometimes it’s glares, sometimes he can even drive Harry out of a room if he does it long enough and Harry is in a particularly bad mood. Or, as the evidence seems to suggest, if he’s reached the ends of the man’s patience.

It’s scary, exhilarating, and satisfying all at once to harass the man wearing the face of the Harrison-Wells-who-was-not, because he knows the kind of reaction he would have gotten if he’d reached the end of _Dr. Wells’_ patience. The fact that Harry — who is literally physically _identical_ to a man who could probably rightfully be called his ex — seems to be restraining himself or is for some reason unwilling to be confrontational about this when he is about _everything else_ is something that makes him curious.

Obviously Harry is not actually the Harrison he knew. Even throwing aside the fact that ‘his’ Harrison was actually a sociopathic speedster trapped in the past who shape-shifted himself into Harrison to take his life, Harry is from an alternate world. Harry has a different life, different experiences, a _daughter_ , and a whole different universe which more than likely changed his personality in hundreds of ways they’ll never even know.

By every account, their ‘Earth-1’ Harrison Wells was kind, intelligent, and as a whole _very_ in love with his wife, Tess Morgan. Enough so that people found it plausible that he would be a completely different person after her death. Harry, on the other hand, is abrasive, blunt, sarcastic, and seems eternally on the edge of snapping into violence on a heartbeat.

How much of that is because Zoom has his daughter, and how much is just Harry’s personality showing through the cracks? And _why_ will Harry be aggressive towards him in every sense except when he baits him?

What makes the difference in situations when Harry will deliberately throw his things on the floor, but then won’t retaliate when he, in turn, deliberately antagonizes him right back? It’s completely wrong from what he’s come to expect from that face and it confuses him, throws him a little. Harrison — _Eobard_ — stayed calm and collected at all times _except_ for when he had reason to lash out. Harry seems to lash out every time except when he _has_ reason.

It would be so much easier if Cisco was entirely sure _what_ he wants from Harry. He’s a long ways from stupid, and he knows it’s not just the simple enjoyment of getting to harass and irritate Harry with apparent impunity. There are too many other factors for it to be that cut and dry, because it _also_ feels like slipping into old patterns again. Patterns that specifically started to appear when he was stressed, and with all the insanity of their current brand of metahumans and the hovering threat of Zoom he is most _definitely_ stressed.

It was in those strained moments where it was just him and Harrison in the lab and he couldn’t _quite_ figure out a piece of technology. Tired, uselessly banging his head against a mental block that wouldn’t allow his genius to figure out the problem of how to make this or that work, and Harrison there because Harrison was _always_ there later than any of them. He would tease, and annoy, and Harrison would take off those glasses, pull him closer, and _shut him up_. It was an accepted part of their dynamic, and it always worked to kickstart his brain again.

Baiting Harry isn’t the same, but there’s a similarity to the way his eyes narrow and the way his voice lowers. There’s familiarity in the lines of his shoulders and the frame of those glasses, and if Harry is sitting down he can even sometimes imagine, for just a second, that it’s Harrison there and not his doppelganger. Never for more than a second though, because their expressions are different and Harry doesn’t _speak_ the same way that Harrison did, or ever say the things or react the way that Cisco expects him to.

So he baits, and he challenges, and he doesn’t know _why_ he’s doing it but maybe just once the ‘why’ can get ignored. He can ignore that slight dissatisfaction when Harry walks out of a room instead of taking off those glasses, pointing to the floor in front of him, and demanding: _‘Here.’_ He can push away the little spark of disappointment when Harry tells him _‘don’t’_ but doesn’t back it up or _make_ him stop when he just pushes harder.

At the same time, he can be thankful that Harry _doesn’t_ do those things because he’s not sure he could actually handle it. He doesn’t know what he might do if Harry presses him the same way that Harrison used to, or how badly the memory of Harrison’s blow to his heart might strike and whether he’ll be able to breathe through it or just have to clutch at the nearest surface and _not move_. These days it’s usually the former; the memories have gotten easier with each time that he’s forced to relive them and maybe that’s _another_ reason he finds himself doing this.

Baiting Harry, seeing that familiar face and feeling those little bursts of fear, makes it all easier. Every time he comes out of that flash of terror it gets a little easier to handle next time. _He’s_ baiting Harry, _he’s_ in control of that ‘trigger’ as Harry puts it, and that makes it so completely different than when it was unpredictable or Harry was doing it out of absolutely nowhere. Small, controlled exposure to fears makes them less paralyzing; he’s done his research on that particular phenomena.

It’s not perfect, but at least it’s something.

* * *

Harrison is not, despite anyone’s insinuations to the contrary, an idiot. He recognizes full well that Cisco is _testing_ him, even if he doesn’t know quite _why._ It’s a question he plays with from time to time; when Cisco is behaving like a petulant _child_ and grinning, not flinching, when he’s not so busy and overwhelmed he will do something he regrets if he stays in the room, when he’s willing to _relax_.

It’s not very often, but when their moods align just so, he lets Cisco bait him, shakes his head and tells him _no_ and analyzes the smug grin that paints Cisco’s features, filing it away to consider later if an emergency arises, baiting Cisco _back_ if it doesn’t.

“Don’t,” he snaps, waiting for Cisco to decide what to do with his irritation, feeling perversely _pleased_ when Cisco just slurps harder and spins in his chair, both things that make Harrison want to rip out his own hair.

“Don’t what?” Cisco asks, smiling around the straw in his mouth, and then he slurps his drink harder.

Harrison is pretty sure that his cheek is twitching at this point, and Cisco’s eyes are glued to his face. He wonders how Cisco will react if Harrison throws a wrench in the game; Cisco had almost _died_ or _disintegrated_ or _ceased to exist_ yesterday, and that would have left him no closer to a resolution in this stupid mystery— _people_ had never fascinated him, not like Tess had, not like Cisco does.

“Slurp like that,” Harrison says, dropping his voice a little lower, watching to make sure he doesn’t trigger Cisco’s panic. That, now that he’s made the goggles and tested all possible hypotheses, is pointless and counter-productive.

Cisco watches him narrowly and slurps again, harder. There’s no mistaking how utterly deliberate it is, and Harrison wants to _dissect_ him, figure out the way he thinks so he can predict his reactions.

He reaches for the drink cup and tugs it away from Cisco’s hand. He lets it go easily, and Harrison wants to be surprised, but he _can’t,_ not with Cisco’s game between them both.

“Why?” Cisco asks, and Harrison flounders for a response, turning crisply to set aside the drink cup only to turn back to the question still in Cisco’s eyes.

“Because you’re doing it on purpose,” Harrison says coolly, and Cisco smirks and leans back. “And because it’s the most irritating noise on the planet.”

“Well,” Cisco says slowly, still leaned back and smirking. “You could say that one has something to do with the other. Which isn’t really a reason for me to stop at all, actually.” He jerks abruptly from the chair and presses his body between Harrison and the desk where he’d set the drink, turning so they were chest to chest and drawing the straw to his lips. His smile flickers to fear for a bare second, and then it’s back in force as he sucks down a long drink.

No slurping.

Harrison wants to ask him why, but he suspects it has something to do with the hand he has half-raised, ready to knock the drink aside, and that brief flicker of fear.

“There are other ways to bug me, Ramon,” Harrison says, very careful to keep his voice in a lighter register.

When Cisco gets like this, he is always careful to haul the differences between himself and Eobard Thawne between them. A shield, but from what, Harrison isn’t _quite_ sure. He is too cowardly to ask, too.

“Yeah,” Cisco says. “But this one makes you _flinch_. I kinda like it.”

It startles Harrison into a burst of laughter, and Cisco frowns, shaking his head.

“It’s not funny,” Cisco mumbles, ducking his head, and Harrison learns, half a second too late _as usual_ that his natural reaction is somehow exactly wrong.

“Cisco Ramon,” Harrison says, serious for a moment, abandoning the game. “For all that you are a genius, the closest thing this Earth has offered me to an intellectual equal, you can be very obtuse.”

“What?” Cisco snaps, jerking back and coming up against the desk hard.

“I do not, in any way, find you funny,” Harrison said, corralling him in closer, so Cisco has to tilt his head back to look at him. His body is warm against Harrison’s chest, and he wants to press him _harder_ which is insane because he has _responsibilities_ and, moreover, Cisco is more terrified by him than he could ever be aroused.

(The images that thought conjures linger though; Cisco pressed back and back until he is bent over the desk, his eyes huge and his lips parted, his hair all splayed out, his clothes disheveled, Harrison’s name tripping out on a moan.)

“You— you always laugh!” Cisco accuses.

“At irony, at the _universe_. Not you,” he says. “Never you.” He is not certain the last is a lie, and perhaps it will soothe Cisco enough that he can withdraw and think about this alone.

“Oh,” Cisco breathes, and then he sets the drink cup down behind him and plants both hands on Harrison’s chest and _shoves._ “Okay. That’s _way_ better. Nothing like someone laughing at the universe in general in my general direction. Seriously?”

Harrison goes exactly as far as Cisco pushes him and no further.

“Well, you do have an uncanny ability to discern the universe’s whims,” Harrison said. “And with my case in particular, well—”

“The universe has a very sick sense of humor, I think,” Cisco says firmly. “Why do you let me?”

“What?” Harrison blurts, shocked by the abrupt change in mood and in topic.

“Bug you. You could stop me. Why not?”

“Do you want me to stop you?” Harrison asks, edging back into the space Cisco had pushed him out of.

“No,” Cisco says. “Yes. I don’t know. Maybe?”

“Maybe that’s why,” Harrison says. He wants to touch — settles on Cisco’s shoulder, and there is too much tension for a heartbeat, and then Cisco leans in, and Harrison wants— but that’s insane, that’s _wrong_ , he still has no idea what he’s doing here, what Cisco thinks he _will_ do here so he can do the opposite.

Against all instinct and better thought, he uses the grip he has on Cisco’s shoulder to pull him in, to hold him, very loosely, in a hug.

“What are you doing?” Cisco asks, muffled.

“Reassuring you,” Harrison replies.

“Oh, I’m very reassured,” Cisco says. “Let me show you just how reassured I am.”

Except Cisco just wraps his arms around Harrison’s shoulders and turns so his head is tucked warmly under Harrison’s chin.

Harrison shuts his eyes. “When you figure out what reaction, exactly, it is that you are looking for, let me know.”

“Oh, you’ll be the first person I tell, believe me,” Cisco says, exhaling hard.

Harrison can feel the warmth of his breath through his shirt.

He tentatively cups a hand around the back of Cisco’s head, and Cisco makes a half-sound, maybe a moan, maybe a whimper, and he settles there, all of his weight draped heavily on Harrison’s chest.

Okay, he thinks. The experiment is either over, or it’s just beginning, and he’s not certain which he’d prefer. “Okay,” he whispers, and Cisco laughs, low and vague and probably not actually _at_ Harrison.

But even if it is, he doesn’t mind.

* * *

Harrison is not expecting the next stage in Cisco’s experiment, but he should be.

He walks into the lab, later than he usually is, and finds Cisco wearing his glasses, which if he’d asked Harrison, he’d say ‘don’t wear those alone’ because it just wasn’t a stellar idea to induce panic and _visions of the future_ when one is alone, but Cisco Ramon was reckless with his own safety on _good_ days, and the last few days haven’t been particularly good; not for any of them.

“Ramon,” Harrison says, and Cisco jerks at the sound, his breath rasping from his lungs in a panicked rush. “Why don’t you hand me the glasses?”

“Can’t,” Cisco breathes. “God, why can’t I see him?”

“Ramon!” Harrison says sharply. “Come here.”

Cisco turns slightly, and Harrison decides that enough is enough and snatches the glasses off his face.

Cisco blinks and bends double, gripping his knees and panting.

“What the _hell_ were you doing, Ramon?” Harrison demands in a low voice. From the way Cisco’s trembling redoubles, he thinks that once again he has made a misstep.

He sucks in a steadying breath and takes a step back. “Ramon, you need to look at _me_. Whatever you were seeing through those glasses isn’t here, isn’t _me_.”

“How did you know,” Cisco demands, still pale and panting. “You can’t—”

“I’m not as stupid as I look, Ramon,” Harrison says dismissively, turning to the board with his equations to give Cisco a semblance of privacy in which to collect himself.

“I can see my past too,” Cisco says after a few minutes. Harrison spends the whole time staring at the board without seeing the equations. “Objectively.”

“And?” Harrison asks, dismissive. _Curiosity won’t win this_ , he thinks.

“I wanted to see if— if anyone else could see,” Cisco replies slowly.

Harrison nods once. It makes a certain sense, he thinks. It’s always hard to view situations in which one is emotionally compromised with any degree of objectivity, and the perspective being available to Cisco had to have been more than tempting, but— “Alone?” he demands. “Don’t you think your little friends would want to know so they could—”

There is someone warm and willing curling into his chest, and Harrison draws his hands up to hold Cisco without quite realizing what is happening. A hard stick, presumably from some candy of Cisco’s, is jabbing into his collarbone.

“What are you doing?” Harrison finally brings himself to ask. Cisco’s hair curls warm around his fingers, and he rubs the shaking back with long even strokes.

“Seeking reassurance,” Cisco mumbles around his sucker.

Harrison’s fingers clench reflexively— no one has trusted him this much since Jesse had hit adolescence, no one—

Only Cisco does _not_ trust him; Cisco looks at him and sees the face of a man who had trapped him and his emotions for _years._ This cannot be the same as that memory.

And yet. “Is it working?” Harrison asks.

“I don’t know,” Cisco says, but his shaking is subsiding and his breathing is growing more even.

After just a few moments, Cisco melts away, leaving Harrison feeling cold and remote as he stares at his protege from another life.

“Well,” Harrison says. “That’s something. Did you find what you were looking for, or would you like to try again?”

Cisco frowns at him. “What?”

“With the glasses,” Harrison says. He gestures to where they lay, a forlorn little heap on the floor.

“Right!” Cisco says abruptly, making finger-guns. Harrison winces because the meaning on his Earth is apparently drastically different to the meaning on this one. He tries, but some things— “Because what else would you mean. Anyway, I mean, if it wouldn’t be too distracting from your Board of Doom or whatever, we could do the thing. If you want. I mean it’s not a big deal either way, I’m not really—”

“Go sit down before you put them on,” Harrison orders, the snap of command in his words hitting _something_ inside Cisco and shutting him up as he scurries to do as he’s told.

He’s never really sure if it’s gratifying or awful when Cisco does that.

He’s pretty sure it’s nothing of his own authority that Cisco is remembering, and he’s not really sure how to erase that. (How to _replace_ that, a tiny, traitorous part of his mind supplies.)

“Okay,” Cisco says. “Ready?”

“It’s your amygdala,” Harrison says, shrugging and leaning back.

Cisco snorts and slips the glasses back on.

“Tell me what you see,” Harrison prompts.

“Really?” Cisco demands, voice thready with fear again already.

“Yes,” Harrison says firmly. He’s not above underhanded means to get the knowledge he desires, after all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skali : Welcome! So, diving in right where the last chapter left off. Hope you enjoy!

“It’s a— a rush. Just images, flashes, little bits of color.”

Familiar though, because he’s had just a little practice with the glasses now and it’s not quite so overwhelming. It’s easier to let all of those little bits of time slip past without trying to grab onto one in particular, without trying to analyze and see every single bit of history and future and present (and other _universes_ ) spread inside his mind and in front of his eyes.

Harry’s voice comes through strong — it always does — when he prompts, “So focus, Ramon. Think about what you’re looking for.” And then, because Harry sometimes just seems to _know_ , he specifies, “ _Who_ you’re looking for.”

There’s a wrong answer and a right answer, and he knows the name is _Eobard_ but what comes out of his mouth is, “ _Harrison_.”

It’s not the blonde man with the empty smirk and the yellow suit that comes to mind either. It’s that wheelchair and those glasses, that dark hair and those endlessly observant _eyes_. So it’s that he focuses down on, catching a glimpse of a vibrating hand and the whisper of a word — _son_ — and quickly shoving that memory away because oh _hell_ no. The memory that takes its place is softer, brighter, with that little bit of blur as his eyes focus on one thing and then the next without allowing him to take in the whole room at once.

“I’m in a kitchen,” he breathes, hardly willing to disturb the memory because it’s _not_ one of the bad ones. Standing over a sink, washing two sets of dishes from a meal and setting them aside to dry. “His home,” he adds belatedly. “Already ate, night’s over. Cleaning the dishes.”

“Tell me about them,” Harry demands.

For a moment the command makes no sense, and he asks, “The dishes? Why?”

“It’s practice,” is the instant answer. “When you use your powers to guide Barry you never know what detail might save his life or make his job easier; you’ll need to see everything,” a _snap_ of fingers that sounds too close to his ear and makes him flinch, “like _that_. Tell me about the room, the details, the situation. Everything.”

Simultaneously, something in his chest rises and falls. Harry’s missed why he’s digging into his own memories, that he’s trying to find _something_ he should have noticed (and maybe understand exactly what happened at the same time), but there’s definitely a part of him that’s insisting that he _thank God_ that Harry’s missed it. It’s confusing and he’s not sure which he wants — seems to _never_ be sure about that these days — so he pushes that weird struggle in his chest out of his mind and decides to obey.

“Two sets of dishes, me and him, plus the dishes for cooking. Silver-colored utensils, black square plates, wine glasses. I cooked; he told me what to make and how.” Little flashes follow his thoughts, images overlapping the main one as he thinks about what happened earlier the same night. “It’s a nice house, expensive; marble floors, granite countertops. There’s usually music playing — classical — but it’s turned off. He’s—” He has to stop, gasp for a little breath as his mind slides back to the sharp pain of being stabbed. “He’s behind me. Usually he answers emails while I clean up.”

Turning his head against the memory is like pushing through a wall of something vaguely sticky, trying to keep him in place where the memory knows he should be, but that’s a feeling he’s grown somewhat used to and he pushes it away to turn back and look.

There’s Dr. Wells in all his old glory, leaning back against the kitchen table as he works on a tablet nestled into the crook of his left arm. Impossible to see what’s on it from this angle — he could look, if he wanted — but probably just more correspondence and business about the fast rising business of Star Labs. Harrison’s barefoot, in sweatpants and a plain grey t-shirt, but that doesn’t at all detract from the innate sense that Harrison is in _control_. There was always an unyielding, commanding edge to Harrison, and he always thought that it was just because even among their ranks, Harrison was an absolute genius. Maybe Hartley rivaled him, but none of the rest of them could come close to the kind of intelligence that Harrison lived and breathed.

And hey, he had been right after all. There probably weren’t many people in the world who could compete with a genius from a future already filled with what _this_ time would consider geniuses; it must have been beyond frustrating for Harrison to hide just how smart he was.

“Ramon?” Harry asks, at the same time that Harrison lifts his head and meets his gaze.

_“Finished, Cisco?”_

Before he can think, he’s answering, “Yes, sir,” to both of them. He freezes a moment later, realizes he’s said that _to Harry_ , but the memory’s already continuing and it’s too late to dwell.

 _“Good.”_ Harrison’s gaze lowers back to his tablet, dismissive and cool once again. _“Remember to take your coat on the way out; I don’t want to find it thrown over my couch like last time. The driver’s waiting outside for you, as always, and I expect you at Star Labs tomorrow morning. **On time**.”_

“Ramon, you _talk_ to me or I end this.”

He sucks in a sharp little breath at Harry’s reminder, knows what he said in this memory originally but forces himself to say something else aloud. “I finished the dishes, he’s reminding me to pick up my coat before I leave. Driver’s outside; need to be on time tomorrow morning. I—” The memory of Harrison looks up at him, eyes narrowing with just a touch of irritation over the tops of those glasses, and he has to swallow before he can continue. “I don’t want to leave, it’s late and I…”

_“Cisco, what are you doing right now?”_

And he chokes a bit, whispers, “I’m being selfish. He— I shouldn’t—”

“Why can’t you stay?” Harry asks, as Harrison nods, irritation turning to expectation.

_“And why is that?”_

He can feel his shoulders curl in shame, and distantly feels his hands tighten against the armrests of a chair it doesn’t feel like he’s sitting in. “If I stay, people will talk, rumors will get out. His public reputation would suffer and they’d— they’d think that he gave me my job just because…”

 _“That’s right.”_ Harrison snaps the fingers of his free hand, then points to the floor in front of those bare feet. He follows the command with wordless obedience, taking the two steps forward and sinking to his knees in front of Harrison. Head bowed, hands on his thighs. _“What am I doing by refusing you, Cisco?”_

“He’s protecting me by making me leave. I— I’m being _stupid_ and short-sighted and he’s stopping me. It’s better his way; always better. I know that.” The feeling catches in his throat, guilt and shame because he’s _disappointed_ Harrison. “I should have known better than to say anything.”

_“Yes, you should have. Go home, Cisco; you can apologize to me tomorrow, once you’ve remembered how much effort I’ve put into making you better.”_

He shudders, presses his lips together on a whimper and answers, “Thank you, sir.”

“For what, Ramon?” Harry’s voice is engaged where Harrison’s is dismissive, and the contrast jars him like a physical blow, feels right and wrong all at once. How can two people with the same voice sound so similar and so _different_ at the same time?

“Letting me apologize, making me remember, he— I’m _nothing_ without him; he made me everything I am and—”

There are hands at his temples, pulling the glasses he’s forgotten he was wearing off his face and _that’s_ jarring too. The world snaps into focus, his mind wrenching away from the old memory and throwing him back into the bright colors and stunning clarity of the present world. To narrowed blue eyes behind black framed glasses looking down at him, and it’s too familiar and his breath catches in his throat and sticks there. He can barely _breathe_.

“That’s enough of that,” Harri— _Harry_ says firmly, setting the glasses aside on the desk without even looking at them. “Ramon, you need to _come back_. Get your head out of the past and focus, _now_.”

He sucks in a sharp breath, the command jumpstarting his system like Harry has a direct line to his buttons. “I—” He pries his hands off the arms of the chair, then rubs down them and straightens up, tries to move or stand but there’s _nowhere to go_. Harry is standing over him and the desk is at his back and that means he’s _trapped_. It’s familiar and welcome and terrifying all at the same time.

But it’s not the same, _Harry_ isn’t Harrison and even if he was that wouldn’t be right either. None of it is _right_.

He manages to shove the chair sideways, out from between the desk and Harry, and scramble to his feet. “I’m s-sorry. I can’t— I just— I’m _sorry_.” He yanks his gaze away from Harry’s and doesn’t quite run for the door, his heart pounding and all of the emotion still clogging up his throat like it’s going to suffocate him.

Harry doesn’t stop him, and he _doesn’t know_ if that’s what he wants either.

* * *

Harrison just barely resists the urge to curse aloud as Cisco flees, but he isn’t certain Cisco is seeing _him_ , so he watches him go and sits down in the recently-vacated chair, focusing on his breathing.  


He focuses on the steady in-and-out of his breathing for a moment, and once he has mastered his immediate, unproductive reaction, he forces himself to send a message to Caitlin, informing her that Cisco seemed upset about something and would she _please_ see to him before he came haring back, ready to fight?

Her response is a completely un-accented “ok”, and he once again wonders if she actually likes him, or if she had been simply too good at the doctoring parts of her education to let such a thing as personal dislike cloud her reactions.

Harrison stands up and notices that at some point, Cisco had dropped his candy— lollipop, he remembers. The thing seems like a choking hazard waiting to happen, but that is hardly something people on this Earth cared about, apparently.

Still, he had dropped it, and it’s leaving a sticky mess on the floor, so Harrison may as well clean it up.

Once that’s in the trash, Harrison stares around the lab. He’s still running simulations on the brain tissue he’d biopsied, and the calculations of the kinetic distortions the Turtle’d effected were still on the board. None of it catches his attention; all he can think about is Cisco’s resigned “Yes, sir,” and that is untenable.

He allows himself to kick the doorway as he leaves.

* * *

When he comes back, hours later, it’s with bags of Big Belly Burger, and he sets one in front of Caitlin where she’s working at the computers. He’d gotten enough for Garrick too, and would bet he had left the room so as not to encounter Harrison, which is all to the better as far as he’s concerned.  


“He’s fine,” Caitlin says, and he tries to smile for her, but he’s never been able to lie like that with any degree of conviction. She grimaces back, and he mutters something that might have sounded grateful, if he weren’t trying to fool too many people.

The second bag has food for Cisco, and for himself, and he wonders if it will work as a peace offering, or if Cisco will reject it as pity, or coddling.

(He wants, a little, to coddle Cisco, to convince him he is special, but he has never been any good at that, and he thinks Cisco would be exactly the worst person to try to start with.)

“Hey,” Harrison says as he rounds the corner, so Cisco won’t jump too badly when Harrison gets close enough for him to notice.

Cisco jumps _anyway_ , fumbling the glasses so badly that they skitter to the floor, and Harrison looks at them, then back at Cisco.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” he demands, forgetting, for the moment, that he’s supposed to be trying to soothe Cisco’s fears. “Why would you do that _alone_ after our discussion this morning? Are you so _stupid_ that you don’t understand when I’m speaking to you?”

Cisco stares at him with wide, expressionless eyes.

“I—” he breathes, and Harrison edges back when he sees the way Cisco’s hands are trembling. “I don’t know,” he says finally.

Harrison stops short, stymied. Cisco has an answer for _everything_ ; it’s one of the things he really enjoys about his company.

“What?” Harrison blurts.

“I don’t know, and I _have_ to know. And Barry and Caitlin won’t understand, so I can’t—” Cisco makes eye contact, shakes his head slightly. “Don’t make me tell them,” he pleads.

“You don’t have to tell them,” Harrison replies automatically, and he thinks of Cisco’s stuttering explanation of why Wells, _his lover_ , had sent him away. It had been _one_ scene, he thinks, in an entire relationship of similar scenes, of Cisco’s acceptance of his own inherent selfishness for… for _seeking intimacy_ with his lover, of all things, meant.

It meant Harrison would be wise not to meddle here.

“Here,” he says, gesturing at the food. “Don’t do that again. Call me, call _Joe_. Call… I don’t know, Leonard Snart— you’re buddies with his sister, right? But don’t put those on alone; we don’t know what tampering with the amygdala like that long term might do to you, and if you have a seizure and die, I won’t be blamed for it.”

Cisco leans over to collect the glasses and hands them to Harrison.

Harrison stares at them, then turns and locks them in his desk drawer, pocketing the key.

“I’ll tell them I told you not to,” he warns. “And it will be the truth.”

Cisco’s response is to open the paper bag. “You got me a triple triple,” he says, sounding surprised.

Harrison shrugs and goes back to his board of equations.

* * *

It takes a week for him to notice, but he is understandably pre-occupied with defeating Zoom (or allying with him — maybe he _would_ let Jesse go? And what price was speed for a girl’s life — except he couldn’t trust that.)  


He’s coming in early so he can pull his simulations on the brain tissue without anyone asking their prying _questions_ , and he walks in on Cisco, curled under the desk, shaking with sobs.

He is wearing the glasses, and Harrison doesn’t bother saying anything, just tears them free, throwing them with not-inconsiderable force against the wall. He is reaching for his phone to message Caitlin to come down when Cisco grabs his hand.

“No!” he gasps, “No, please, sir, don’t, I’m sorry—”

Harrison has no idea what _torture_ of his counterpart’s Cisco is reliving, so he freezes. “Don’t what?” he asks, trying to cram the entirety of his _concern_ (and how can he be concerned about _Cisco_ when he has _Jesse_ to worry about? He’d thought he couldn’t bear any more _concern_ and here he was…) into his voice, so as not to conflate the two scenes for Cisco.

Cisco shakes his head and creeps closer to Harrison, and before Harrison quite thinks about maybe settling more comfortably and offering physical comfort to Cisco, he’s in his arms, still sobbing and shaking.

Harrison can’t bring himself to hug him back. Now that the concern has subsided, he’s _furious_.

“What did I say about experimenting with these alone?” he demands.

Cisco freezes.

“You have less self-control than a _child_ ,” he snaps, and then his armful of warm Cisco is _gone_ , and Harrison gets to hear another string of apologies as Cisco goes to the far corner of the room and plants himself firmly in it, shaking and sobbing still.

He blinks.

The scene doesn’t change.

He forces himself to _act_ , to stand up and go over and touch Cisco’s shoulder. He’s still shaking, and his face is streaked wet with tears.

“No,” Harrison says firmly. “I’m not leaving you alone over here like this. Come back to the desk, we can talk about this.”

“But I’m in trouble,” Cisco whispers. “I’m _bad_.”

Harrison wonders what it says about him that he can so easily visualize murdering himself in graphic and disturbing ways.

Is it better or worse that it’s not _himself_ he wants to annihilate?

“ _You_ aren’t bad,” Harrison says. “Come over here.”

Cisco lets himself be guided back over to a chair, but balks _hard_ at sitting in it; he seems to think that it’s a trick and that Harrison just wants an excuse to punish him _worse_ which is….

He guides Cisco into kneeling instead, then sits in the chair himself, since it’s the nearest, and looks at Cisco’s dark head, his perfect pose.

In _any_ other circumstances, he’d be— this would be _perfect_. Instead, it’s like some sort of a personal hell, that he is now realizing how thoroughly he craves _that_ from Cisco, and how impossible it will be to have anything but this perverse parody of what he wants.

Cisco is still, and after the reactions from before, Harrison is loathe to disturb him, so he turns the 30 degrees so he is facing the terminal. He did come in early for a purpose, after all.

* * *

He doesn’t understand. He’s done something he’s not supposed to, he’s been _bad_ , and this doesn’t match up with what he was expecting when Harry ripped the glasses from his face and told him everything he already knew. That he was disobeying, ignoring Harry’s orders and purposefully breaking into the locked desk to use an item he was forbidden to.  


Using the glasses alone, not only touching but _grabbing_ Harry without permission, trying to tell him _no_ , and even having the _audacity_ to try and enact his own punishment. He’s been _awful_ and he can’t imagine that Harry actually wants him anywhere nearby. He doesn’t deserve it, and his bad behavior shouldn’t impact Harry at all. He should be in the corner, out of sight and mind until it’s been decided that he’s learned his lesson, and he can properly articulate an apology that _proves_ he understands.

But Harry is barely a foot to his left, working on something that he doesn’t dare to lift his gaze to see. The taps of the keyboard are purposeful and confident though, so it’s something familiar and probably not _too_ difficult. Not that it would matter even if he could look up, because the world is a blur through his tears. It’s easier to stare at the ground and his own legs than to try and actually see anything, and it’s _better_ that way.

This _has_ to be a test of some kind. Harry must just be waiting for him to do something else wrong so there can be some kind of _real_ punishment, and it must be being saved for later so that Harry doesn’t have to bother punishing him more than once today. That’s the only way this makes sense. He’s been bad, he _deserves_ to be punished, and kneeling at Sir’s side is _not_ punishment. That’s a privilege, isn’t it?

He’s trying not to make any sound, _trying_ to be quiet and not disturb Harry anymore than he already has because if this isn’t punishment then he has to be _perfect_. Being allowed to kneel and rest is a moment of peace, it’s acceptance, it’s being _wanted_ somewhere and allowed to just enjoy his own submission without expectation. And he’s ruining it. He’s _wasting_ that time with tears and shivering and agonizing over a punishment to come that he has _no_ control over. That he’s never had any control over.

When did he become so _useless?_

He thought that he was usually a good boy, a good sub, just _good_ in general. But it seems like everything he does isn’t quite what Harry wants, and he doesn’t even know himself if he _wants_ Harry to want him like that and he doesn’t know if Harry is remotely interested or capable and it’s all so _confusing_. If Harry would just _pick_ one way or the other and tell him what was going to happen it would be so much simpler, so much easier to handle. Without an order he can’t tell if Harry is humoring him, or actually wants any of this, or is disgusted by the whole thing. He can’t _tell_.

Harry’s chair creaks, and he flinches at the sound even before fingers touch the back of his neck. Ingrained obedience makes him lower his head a bit more, tilt it so his hair falls to the side and his neck is bare to any further touch. Instead, the fingers ghost their way up and into his hair, and he eases a little bit as they comb back along his scalp. The faint scrape of trimmed nails against his head feels good, and he lets his eyes drift shut as they continue to comb through his hair. His breath comes a little easier, and very slowly the shivers ease away along with the tears.

Finally, the fingers slow to a stop, and a moment later he hears the chair turn and the slight tap of Harry’s feet against the floor.

He pulls his eyes open at the same time as Harry — voice quiet but certainly not soft — orders, “Ramon, turn towards me and look at me.”

It scares part of him, but he obeys anyway. He shifts on his knees until he’s facing Harry, and then raises his head and meets that blue gaze. He can’t read anything off of it except for the impression that Harry is studying him, but that’s worrying enough. He knows he’s a mess, that his nose is clogged, that there are still tear tracks visible on his skin, and that’s only acceptable because he hasn’t had the chance to clean himself up yet. It still means that he’s subpar.

“Ramon…” Harry seems to bite back a sigh, and then brushes his hair back behind his ears with that one hand. “I want you to tell me why you think you’re bad. Tell me why you think I’m angry.”

Oh. _Oh_ , this is familiar. Good. This is good. He can explain, he can apologize, and he was _always_ good at the more physical aspects of a real, heartfelt apology.

Still, his breath catches in his throat when he tries to speak, and it comes out a whisper. “I disobeyed, I lied to you, I— I touched you without permission, I argued with you, and I tried to start my own punishment without your order. I’m _sorry_ , sir. I know better; I deserve whatever punishment you decide on.”

Harry’s jaw tightens a little bit, eyes closing as if in restraint, before he breathes out in the next moment. “Ramon, you’re going to listen to me, is that clear?”

The tone is sharp, commanding, and he nods. “Yes, sir.”

“I am not your dom, Ramon, and I have no claim to you or any real right to demand anything from you. I was angry because you were completely disregarding your own safety and health, and that is a _stupid_ thing to do. Your questionable maturity level aside, you are not _stupid_ , Ramon. Not even by my standards.” Harry’s fingers cup his jaw, tugging him up a couple of inches. “I may not have the right to _make_ you do anything, Ramon, but I helped make those glasses and I _damn well_ have the right to stop you from killing yourself with them.”

He trembles a bit, and Harry’s eyes narrow. “You _will not_ use those glasses without a supervisor here, Ramon. Is. That. _Clear?_ ”

“Yes, sir,” he whispers.

Harry lets him go, leans back in the chair, and then breathes out another of those long, controlled breaths. “If I catch you doing this again, the glasses will stay with me at all times and the restriction will narrow to having _me_ there when you wear them. I won’t let you risk your life like this; don’t think you can get away with it behind my back.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Don’t—” Harry cuts himself off. “I have work to do. You can stay here if you want to, but you don’t have to. Do you understand?”

He fights the urge to squirm, the urge to look away from those intense blue eyes. “Yes, sir.” Harry starts to turn away and his mouth betrays him. “When are you going to punish me?” He cringes the second he realizes what he’s asked, and hurries to backtrack. “Nevermind, sir, I’m _sorry_ , sir _._ It’s not my business; it’s your choice. Please forget I asked.”

Harry is facing him again, and oh _god_ he’s upset him. Why couldn’t he just keep his mouth shut? Why does he always have to _ask_ when he should just accept? He could swear that he used to be good at this.

“You already know that what you did was foolish, and you understand the consequences if you do it again. Will any more punishment change that?”

He shakes his head, and then remembers himself and corrects, “No, sir.” But the thought of _not_ getting punished is… It’s not…

“Do you want me to punish you?”

He shifts, lowers his gaze, feels that sick ball in his chest sink a little lower into shame. “I deserve it.”

“That’s _not what I asked_ ,” Harry snaps, and he jerks his gaze back up. “Do you _want_ me to punish you, Ramon? I expect you to answer that honestly; do _not_ try and tell me what you think I want to hear.”

He hesitates, swallows, tries to _think_.

“ _Yes_ , sir.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skali : Welcome back! (This is probably not what you're expecting, but it was lots of fun to write.) Enjoy!
> 
> Lit : (Comment incoming?)

Harrison freezes at the words, mind going in sixteen different directions; he thinks of things he’d _like_ to do to Cisco, to wreck him, to break him down and put him back together again, but it’s just flashes, and anyway, if he had his way, not a _one_ of them would be punishment.

To buy himself time, he crosses over to the sink at the back of the lab and turns on the tap, waiting for the water to get hot before he soaks one of the lint-free towels Cisco keeps handy with steaming water and brings it back.

Cisco’s face is a mess, and Harrison really ought to hand him the towel and tell him to clean himself up; he _should_ , but he _can’t_. The words die between clenched teeth and he’s scowling at his own lack of will even as he curves his hand against Cisco’s jaw and tilts his face up, applying the towel to his tear-streaked face, letting the heat of it soak in and soothe what might well be one hell of a headache.

Everyone he’s ever had the chance to get to know has gotten headaches after crying; he thinks it might be universal. Dr. Snow would be able to tell him, but then she’d probably wonder why he was thinking about it.

“What if I say no?” Harrison asks. “What if I tell you you won’t be punished and my decision is final?”

Cisco still has a few sobs left in him, because he chokes one back and presses his face harder into Harrison’s hands.

“I-it’s your choice, sir,” he mumbles into the cotton.

Harrison nods and shifts so that he can crouch more comfortably. He lets go of Cisco’s jaw and guides one of Cisco’s hands up to take the towel.

“What’s my name?” Harrison asks, because there are parts of him that _need_ to know the truth, no matter how painful it is.

“Dr. Wells,” Cisco says, hesitating, then scrubbing his face vigorously.

 _Wrong_ , Harrison thinks, because as much as he _hates_ the nickname Cisco’d settled on, it’s better than… than being _unsure_ who Cisco was seeing here.

“Mmm,” Harrison replies, and since he’s close enough for it, he smoothes Cisco’s hair, which is a tangled mess of black, probably from a sleepless night, since Cisco’s still in yesterday’s clothes, and from Harrison’s ministrations earlier.

Sleepless night, he thinks, jerking his hand away with the sudden realization of what he can do, here.

“Fine,” he tells Cisco. “Finish cleaning your face and then stand up.”

Cisco’s unsurety is telegraphed acutely in the way he freezes and then slowly starts moving, but only doing Harrison had ordered.

“You did want me to punish you,” Harrison says. “Unless you changed your mind?”

“No, sir,” Cisco says.

“Well,” Harrison says. “Let me know if you do.” He hopes Cisco will.

Cisco’s reluctance, his _fear_ , shows in subtle ways. He doesn’t linger in washing his face, or hesitate in climbing back to his feet, but he can’t quite look _at_ Harrison, and his gaze, when it does fall on Harrison, lingers on his hands, his belt, his shoes. Harrison pretends not to notice any of that, instead taking Cisco’s wrist in his hand and turning, leading the way out the door and wondering at the way Cisco manages to drag his hand backwards without slowing his steps or showing anything but complete docility in his posture.

STAR Labs is a warren of unused corridors and empty offices, with labs that have been simply abandoned; broken glass littering their floors, or abandoned experiments decaying in open air.

Cisco’s work room has the best of the equipment and a comfortable atmosphere that is almost entirely due to the presence of Cisco himself, and it also doesn’t have the blanket feeling of failure cloying around it, reminding Harrison of the months after the explosion, the way many of these labs do.

Harrison has set up a base camp of sorts in an office that has a cot in it; he’s moved a couch from one of the break rooms inside, and a coffeemaker. Though he squats in an apartment not far from the accelerator, he sometimes prefers the proximity of the breach, of his Earth, of Jesse.

When they arrive, he doesn’t give Cisco time to look around, just shoves him gently through the door, leaning against the frame once Cisco’s cleared it.

“Give me your cellphone,” he orders crisply, and a bemused Cisco hands it over. Harrison unlocks it deftly, and Cisco doesn’t even glare at him for it, which is so out of character that Harrison would laugh, except for how it absolutely is not funny. “On second thought,” he says, even though he’s been planning this all along, “Take off your clothes and put them on the sofa.”

Cisco, naked, is a test in willpower, but one that Harrison thankfully passes. He manages to keep his breathing even by considering the fact that the only reason Cisco is naked is so he can be certain that there is nothing Cisco can use to distract himself, and his own _interest_ in the matter is hardly productive.

He fiddles with the volume on the phone and flips to the alarms, setting one for four hours from now. “Get up on the bed.”

Cisco does, kneeling with that perfect posture again, and his face is expressionless.

Harrison is fairly certain that Cisco is faking it, faking all of it.

“Stay there,” he says. “For four hours.” Cisco’s lips part, but Harrison doesn’t give him a chance to say anything. “I don’t care what you do on that bed, or in it, as long as you don’t move off of it for the next four hours. I set an alarm on your phone. You can get up when you hear it, you can _use_ it once you hear it.”

“But I—”

“Sleep, stare at the ceiling, draw with your blood on the wall, I don’t care. Just do not move from that bed.”

Cisco gapes.

Harrison smiles.

“Boredom _is_ an adequate punishment, I trust?” he asks sweetly, though his intention is not, in fact, to bore Cisco into obedience.

Cisco resettles, pressing his back against the wall and tucking his knees under his chin.

“Yes, sir,” he says, and there is still no resistance in it, and Harrison wants to shake his head.

Instead, he flips off the light.

“Four hours,” he reminds him, and then he shuts the door behind him.

It takes him several minutes to force himself to walk away.

Cisco needs the sleep, and his standing here trying not to worry wouldn’t help anyone at all.

* * *

Time _drags_.

He can see the bright blue blink of his phone, the notification that he has messages or emails or _something_ , and it’s a certain kind of torture to see it but not be allowed to go to it. It’s the only light in the room, the only thing to focus on apart from his own breathing and the circling thoughts in his head.

He expected…

He doesn’t _know_ , and Cisco supposes he should be used to not knowing what he wants by now but it still sits heavy in his chest like some kind of weight. Being led away to somewhere private by his wrist wasn’t new, and neither was being told to strip down or get on a bed. It isn’t his place to wonder about a punishment, or do anything but accept it, but somewhere at the back of his mind was the thought that this was going to be physical.

Why wouldn’t it be? Being naked and on a bed was usually a clear sign that there would be touch, or at the least he’d be putting on some kind of show. It’s _never_ meant that he’d just get left alone.

He’s been left alone with his own thoughts as punishment a lot of times, until Harrison decided that he’d learned his lesson, but it was never like this. He’s never been given a set time before, never been left without at least some semblance of supervision even if it was just the knowledge that Harrison could see him on security cameras if he wanted to. He’s never been allowed to _move_.

It’s… It’s frightening to be restricted without actually being at all restricted. He’s naked, sure, but his phone and his clothes are _right there_ , and how would Harry even know if he used his phone for any of it? There’s nothing actually stopping him from doing any of that.

Nothing except the feeling of the wall against his back and the loop of his arms around his knees, keeping him tied to one spot because it’s just _easier_ if he doesn’t move. That, and there’s this painful, aching twinge of desire way in the back of his head and heart. The desire to just be _good_ , because everything he’s done lately has been wrong and bad and he just wants to feel _good_ for one time this month. He wants to feel whole and safe again in a way he hasn’t — if he’s frankly, painfully, _honest_ with himself — since Harrison turned out to be a sociopathic killer from the future.

He wants to know that he can be _good_ , because he must not have been if Harrison cared so little. God it _hurt_ in a thousand different ways to be called Harrison’s ‘son,’ to know that what he thought was important, what he thought was _love_ , had turned out to not even matter. It ached to think that he’d given _everything_ , and then some, to someone who had then literally torn his heart apart.

Was it wishful thinking or somehow true that Harrison seemed to care for him? If that were true would it have made Harrison’s willingness to kill him better or worse?

He doesn’t know that either.

His eyes drift closed, and he startles awake again. The blue light blinks its steady pulse at him, and unwillingly he feels his eyelids lower again. He drags in a breath, tightens his grip on his knees until it stings a little, and shivers. The air is cool, it’s dark, and he’s _tired_.

Sleep has been a necessary sacrifice for awhile now. He’s had work to do, metahumans to track and stop, Barry to guide, and his own past to figure out. If that means downing a little more caffeine and sleeping a couple less hours a night, that’s fine. The work’s more important; helping Barry be the Flash is more _important_. Why would it matter if he’s tired when he has to help Barry save lives, save the world? When he has a million things to do and not enough hours in the day to do them if he bothers to _sleep?_

It doesn’t stop him from having to jerk awake again when his head dips. There’s nothing to focus on, nothing to keep him awake. The blankets on the bed feel soft underneath him, and every sense says he should be sleeping.

God, four _hours_ of this? That’s… There’s no clock in here, no sense of time, for all he knows it’s been five minutes and that’s it. It could be an _eternity_ before that alarm goes off and he’s allowed to leave the bed. Harry didn’t leave him anything to _do_ …

But Harry said he could do whatever he wanted as long as he didn’t leave the bed.

He squeezes his knees tighter, winces at the sting, and then presses his head into his knees in frustration and then resignation. Slowly, he uncurls from against the wall and feels his way along the bed. The blankets are just as soft as they felt, and when he slips underneath them and stretches out it feels _very_ nice. He relaxes into the pillow, turning his head into it and drawing in a breath that smells unfamiliar but comforting.

It’s warm beneath the blankets, comfortable, and when his eyes slip shut he knows there’s no more point in fighting it.

It’ll just be a few minutes; a little nap to chip away at some of that looming four hours of time before he waits out the rest of it. He’ll just let his eyes rest, let his mind stop spinning, let everything slow down for a little while before he has to be up and running again. He’s stuck here anyway, and Harry said he didn’t care what he did so that means he’s not expected to stay awake or in position.

But he _wants_ to. He wants to prove that he can obey, that he can be a good boy. He wants to be kneeling and perfect and silent when — if — Harry comes back, just to show that he _can be good_.

He swears, he can be good.

* * *

Something smells amazing.

Cisco stirs, tilting his head a little bit out of where it’s buried in a pillow, and pulls in a deeper breath. He lets that amazing smell coax him away from sleep, from the comfort of the pillow and the soft blankets over him, stretching out on his stomach and giving a small, wordless groan. His eyelids are reluctant to rise, but he slowly gets them open, and stalls.

For a second memory escapes him, confusion reigning because this is _not_ his room and most definitely not his bed. Then his gaze lands on the black line of a leg, follows it up to where the other foot is hooked over its knee. By the time he remembers what’s going on his gaze has gotten high enough to meet Harry’s. He swallows, remembers that this was a punishment and he should have been aware when Harry came back in, should have been _awake_.

“Stop,” Harry commands, quietly.

He freezes in place on automatic, but doesn’t actually know what Harry is talking about and that’s worrying. What’s he doing wrong? He drops his gaze, does his best to make it clear without actually moving that he’s really trying not to do whatever it is that Harry doesn’t like.

He can hear Harry sigh, and then there are fingers sliding over his temple, brushing his hair back away from his face. They pause for a moment, as if in hesitation, before continuing back along his scalp. He closes his eyes under the sensation, leaning into it before he can think to stop himself. There’s no anger, no sudden tightening of the fingers or abrupt removal, and the spike of fear eases into relief so suddenly that his breath catches in his throat. Slowly, when there’s no other reaction from Harry apart from the continued stroking of his hair, he just breathes out and lowers his head back down into the pillow.

Eventually Harry’s fingers slow, and then pull away all together. He almost drifts back to sleep, but something still smells absolutely great and distinctly _food-ish_ , so he cracks his eyes back open. Harry is leaning off his chair, reaching down for something, and he pushes himself up to his elbows so he can watch. He recognizes the pile of his own clothes a moment before Harry sets it down by his hip and then clearly deliberately sits back into the chair.

“In case you want them,” Harry clarifies, and then turns a bit more towards him. The curl of that mouth into a smirk feels familiar at the same time as it feels _completely_ different. “So, feeling better, Ramon?”

Harry’s tone is unquestionably _smug_ , and he stares, thinks about that smirk, and the setup, and Harry’s initial refusal, and… All the little pieces click together in Cisco’s head like the jagged edges of a jigsaw puzzle.

“You _played_ me,” he accuses, pushing up to sitting. He’s more shocked than angry, though there’s a little bit of indignation at the fact that Harry literally sent him to take a _nap_ and just hid it behind the idea of it being a punishment. “This was never— You knew this would happen!”

One of Harry’s eyebrows rises, though that smirk stays in place. “What a leap to guess that a sleep deprived individual who has been _abusing_ his own fear responses would succumb to exhaustion if locked in a dark room with a comfortable bed and nothing to distract him.” Harry’s arms cross, and with more than a bit of mockery he adds, “So answer the question, Ramon. Are you feeling better?”

Mocking or not, it still has an edge of command to it that he can’t stop himself from reacting to. He swallows, lowers his gaze to his own lap, and after a few moments admits, “Yes, sir.”

And it’s true. He doesn’t feel like he’s running on fumes anymore, only strung along by the next cup of coffee, and all of the clawing guilt and shame from earlier has eased down to a much more manageable and much smaller ball deep in his gut. He does feel _better_ , even though he’s not sure about this whole situation. Throwing himself at Harry’s mercy wasn’t the greatest of ideas — not that he had the mind or the cohesion to be able to recognize that — but now that it’s done…

What does this mean? He’s sitting in what he’s slowly realizing must be _Harry’s_ bed, bared physically as well as emotionally and he never meant to let that happen. He never meant to let anyone else see what he had — or never had — with Harrison. He didn’t— He just—

 _No one was supposed to know_.

“Don’t call me that.”

He looks up, blurts, “What?” before he can think about it.

Harry meets his gaze evenly, smirk gone and eyes just a little narrowed. “I’m not your ‘sir,’ Ramon. Neither of us agreed to that and I for one refuse to be seen through the shades of an old memory.” Harry’s mouth parts like he’s going to say something else, but then he clicks it closed again and turns away. “I brought you food,” he comments, reaching down and coming back up with a brown paper bag curled down too far to see the chain’s logo. “I assumed since you apparently haven’t been sleeping you probably hadn’t really eaten either and might appreciate it.”

Cisco takes the bag hesitantly, fingers curling into the paper and then opening it. He blinks, finally identifies the smell.

“Are these chili cheese fries?” he asks, looking up at Harry with wide eyes. Harry’s mouth curls in a little smile, and his heart rises at the confirmation, at the idea that Harry is getting him what he _wants_ , not what’s good for him. Harrison would always…

He reaches into the bag and retrieves the container, ignoring the fork completely to flip it open and just dig in with his fingers. His hair falls forward, and he flips his head to keep it back and out of the way almost completely automatically.

He looks up when Harry starts to move, and follows the older man as he stands for just long enough to sit down on the bed next to him instead. “Turn away,” Harry orders, sounding a bit distracted, and he shoots him a questioning look but obeys anyway. He has _chili cheese fries_ ; he’s not exactly keen on the idea of arguing with Harry right now, not when he’s got amazingly delicious food right in front of him.

He turns his back on Harry, and a moment later there are hands in his hair. It pauses him for a second, makes him brace for the tightening fingers that are about to pull his head back, but it doesn’t come. The touch stays gentle, combing his hair back along his scalp and away from his face. It’s actually kind of helpful to his goal of getting all of the food in his mouth, so he just goes back to eating.

Until he starts feeling small tugs on his hair, little moments of pulling that almost…

“Are you braiding my hair?” he asks incredulously.

“Do you want me to stop?” is Harry’s counter.

“I— No, but… That feels complicated. How do you know how to braid?”

Harry’s first answer to his question is a huffed out laugh, but it’s only a second before he’s actually speaking. “I’m the single father of a daughter,” he says, with a note of amusement. “I used to—” It’s a sharp cut off, but not before Cisco can hear Harry’s voice dip down into pain. “Yes,” Harry confirms, “I know how to braid.”

He fidgets for a second, and then turns his head a little bit, just enough to try and look at Harry without disrupting the other man’s work. “Harry, I… I’m sorry about your daughter. Are you sure you don’t want me to…?”

He can feel Harry slow, feel his hands pause. For a long few moments there’s silence — he holds as still as would have been expected of him before — and then he hears Harry draw in a purposefully deep breath.

“I’m sure.” Those fingers start moving again. “Thank you for the thought, Ramon, but I know everything I need to. I _will_ get her back.”

Harry’s voice sounds like steel when he says it, like there’s no possible way he’d let any other outcome happen, and it’s not even aimed at him but he still shivers a little bit. Which is when another weird and somewhat painful thought occurs to him.

“Hey, so, you’re not just like, aiming leftover paternal instinct at me or something right? Cause uh,” he fidgets with the cardboard edge of his food’s container, “that would be a little weird and maybe a lot creepy cause that’s kinda _not_ where my head’s at.”

“I’m _never_ sure where your head’s at,” Harry immediately snipes, and then there’s a slightly stronger tug at his hair. “Maybe if you didn’t insist on trying to run yourself into an early grave I wouldn’t have to make sure you take care of yourself, hm? You could try getting adequate sleep and actually eating three meals a day, and then you could be assured that my interest isn’t just paternal.”

A sharp tug on his hair that bows his head back a couple inches, and then the pressure lets off. He turns his head, feels the thick knot of an apparently secure braid — where did Harry get the hairband? — brush his shoulder, and meets the coolly amused blue eyes looking at him.

Harry raises an eyebrow, slipping off the bed and back to his feet. “Just something you might want to consider trying, if you’re concerned.”

He stares, not really able to form an answer for that, and Harry shakes his head even as that mouth quirks into a tiny smile.

“I’ll see you in the lab, Ramon.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skali: Hello! Welcome to the last chapter! We considered doing more, but it felt kinda right to end it here (with the caveat that we might write a sequel or something at some point). Thanks for coming on the ride with us; hope you enjoyed!
> 
> Lit: (COMMENT!)

Harrison expects that to be the end of it, really. Cisco Ramon is not in any way his responsibility, and he’d washed his hands of whatever the hell Cisco had been trying to pull.

He could still hear the surprise and dismay in Cisco’s voice, the accusing “You _played_ me,” echoing when he tries to feel smug about tricking him into the nap.

The fact was, he _had_ , but he’d been fresh out of alternatives at the time; desperate to make Cisco feel _safe_ again and equally desperate not to compromise his own morals. It had made _sense_ , except that Cisco had not wanted it, and what Cisco wanted was important.

What Cisco wanted was _impossible_.

It’s been three days, and Harrison has been sharing lab space with Dr. Snow to avoid Cisco, staying just out of range of her rather intensely pre-occupied attention, and working on a way to slow Barry Allen down, when Cisco stumbles into the Cortex, his hair clinging to a semblance of a braid, and a crease on his cheek from his pillow.

Harrison should hesitate before handing him his mug of coffee, but he doesn’t. Cisco doesn’t seem to notice the impropriety, he just drinks it down, slurping enough on the dregs to make Harrison wince.

“Nng,” Cisco groans, then he sits down heavily in his usual chair.

“What on earth did you do to your hair?” Harrison demands, as Barry speeds in.

“Wow, Cisco, did I wake you up?” Barry asks, and Harrison spares him a glance before pushing Cisco’s head forward so he can try to figure out what had gone wrong there.

“I found a youtube video. You know it stays out of my eyes better if it’s braided? When I just put it in the elastic thing, it always slips out.”

“Youtube totally failed you, man,” Barry says, laughing and leaning around them to shove a flash drive into the bank of computers. “Here’s why I called you in,” he adds, and Harrison pays him just enough attention to be sure it isn’t _important_ , and he tugs the elastic free from the end of…

Cisco’s _knot_ of hair.

He doesn’t have a comb, but the first time he’d done this, the knots had slipped free easily, just by his touching them, which had _not_ been true of Jesse’s hair, so he carefully worked his way from the bottom up, loosening the would-be braid and being careful not to pull.

Cisco is remarkably responsive to his touch, his head tilting exactly as far as he pushes it and no further, and he is mostly aware of Barry’s scrutiny and silence when he’s finally finished working the mess free, but he chooses to ignore it.

“Joe used to do Iris’s hair,” Barry offers idly, but it is Barry’s nature to speak into silences, comfortable or not, so Harrison doesn’t bother with a response, just pulls up five strands and separates them between his fingers. He thinks that on this Earth, three is customary for boys and girls alike, but he’s not positive, and for Cisco, he’ll err on the side of masculinity.

It isn’t _much_ harder with five, after all.

He fumbles for the elastic when he reaches the end, drops it, and Barry catches it and hands it back to him.

“Don’t let Iris see that,” Barry says. “She’ll make you show Joe and then me and Joe will be stuck getting her into little five-strand braids for the entire weekend so she can show them off at work.”

Harrison snorts.

“I dunno, man,” Cisco says. “I bet your superspeed would come in useful for that. We could test to see if your manual dexterity is in any way impeded by the speed factor. Maybe it’s increased? I always thought the _apparent_ effects on your dexterity were just relative based on speed, but this could be a golden—”

“No,” Barry says, laughing. “I’ll have flashbacks to high school! We didn’t _have_ youtube videos, and Joe wouldn’t just _ask_ someone to show him how to braid her hair because—” “If you were a single dad, you’d understand too, Bear,” Joe says, walking in. “Hey Cisco, Caitlin,” he leans over to hug Barry, and grins. “Nice hair, Cisco. You pay someone for that?”

Cisco leans back and grins at Harrison. “Not yet,” he says with a clear wink, and Harrison takes a determined step away from the temptation he represents. Cisco stands up and refills Harrison’s coffee mug, his grin a little less intent when he hands it to Harrison.

“There,” Barry says. “Totally even.” He laughs at his own joke and presses replay on the video he’d shown them, leaning into Joe while they watch.

“You don’t know,” Cisco retorts. “I make a _killer_ cup of coffee.”

* * *

The increased flirtation is not warning enough for what happens that afternoon, though Harrison thinks it probably should have been.

Instead, he’s surprised by another of those brief, comfortable hugs, and then Cisco is sitting on his workbench and grinning at him.

“So, I ate lunch,” Cisco says warmly, and Harrison raises an eyebrow. “And breakfast,” Cisco adds, smiling ever more brightly at him.

Harrison carefully slides Cisco about a foot to the left and leans back in, prodding at his prototype device.

“Mm,” he finally acknowledges.

“And,” Cisco says, leaning in and down so he can look at Harrison from under his lashes. “ _And_ I got a full six hours of sleep. Almost seven, actually, but my body didn’t know what to do with that and woke me up.”

“Fantastic,” Harrison bites out, nudging Cisco further out of the way and lifting up his soldering iron.

“I have a point,” Cisco says.

Harrison sighs and flips off the soldering iron before leaning back so he can regard Cisco evenly. “And what, Mr. Ramon, might that be? I’m busy trying to fix _your_ Earth, and—”

“My point is if you’re interested in expressing less-than-paternal interest, today’s your chance,” Cisco says. “I mean it. Once in a lifetime opportunity. 100% well-rested and -fed Cisco Ramon right here.” He jabs his thumbs into his chest and his grin doesn’t fade.

“You haven’t had dinner yet,” Harrison points out, resisting the urge to smile back at him.

Cisco laughs. “That’s the point, Harry.”

Harrison freezes. He hadn’t known how much he’d _needed_ to hear Cisco call him that until he _did_ , and he nods slowly.

“I assume you have someplace in mind?” he asks.

Cisco nods solemnly. “You should pick me up at six. I know eight is traditional, but I don’t know if we’ll have like, _stuff_ come up tonight, and early is better if there’s going to be _stuff._ ”

“And is there going to be _stuff?”_ Harrison asks, amused despite his better intentions.

Cisco’s whole face wrinkles up. “Ugh, please, like I would put out on the first date, as _if_. No way, man. I meant _Flash_ stuff, not _stuff_ stuff.”

Slowly, so Cisco can pull away if he wants too, Harrison reaches out to tuck a strand of hair that’s fallen loose from its braid back behind his ear.

“In that case,” Harrison says, “I will see you at six.”

Cisco _beams_ and leaves the room, practically bouncing.

Harrison, knowing he has now put a time limit on his own progress for the day, turns his soldering iron back on and whispers a silent apology to Jesse that he knows she won’t hear.

He wonders, if he explains _everything_ , how much she will mind if he delays her rescue by the few hours he is about to lose to Cisco Ramon.

It’s not like he doesn’t need to eat anyway, he thinks, and he’s wasted her precious time on stupider things.

* * *

“It’s a right at that next street,” he offers, pointing out the branching off street he’s talking about.

He catches the edge of the skeptical look Harry gives him, and tries _really_ hard not to take that the wrong way. The, “Are you sure?” definitely doesn’t help.

“Positive,” he answers, trying to smile bright and not let Harry see quite how nervous he is.

This had seemed like a _great_ idea when he’d thought of it, but every second it gets closer to becoming a reality it seems less like a great idea and more like a really terrible one. He’s holding to it, _barely_ , but there’s a pretty big chunk of him that wants to laugh it off, tell Harry he got _totally_ turned around, and actually go to one of the nice restaurants he knows of. The ones he’s been to once or twice at Dr. Well’s side, where he always feels just a bit out of place.

But that didn’t feel right when he was planning this, and it doesn’t feel right now. He doesn’t want to… He doesn’t want Harry related to Harrison in any way in his head, not as far as he can help it. He can’t help looking at Harry sometimes and getting reminded of Eobard, but he can at least try not to _purposely_ make them more difficult to keep straight in his head. It’s at least one small step in the direction he wants all of this to go.

Harry makes the turn, and then the next one, and finally parks outside of the tall rise of an apartment building without anything more than another skeptical glance. At least until they’re both out of the car, and Cisco is leading the way through the familiar lobby and up the stairs — not the elevator; it makes some creepy noises.

Harry stays quiet all the way up to standing in front of his door, watching him fumble with his keys because _god_ he can never just be smooth.

“This is an apartment,” Harry comments, as he finally gets the door open.

He nods, not quite meeting Harry’s eyes and stepping inside so he doesn’t have to.

“Your apartment?” Harry asks, following him inside and shutting the door with one easy push of a hand.

“Yeah, I—” He has to swallow, try not to fidget. “I mean you can’t really be out all that much without risking someone recognizing you, and uh… I can cook, or I’ve got a drawer of take out menus from places that deliver, and I thought maybe— maybe we could just watch a movie or something?”

Harry is watching him, and he can feel the nerves building in his stomach because yeah, he _knew_ this was a terrible idea. He should have turned around, should have taken Harry to someplace actually nice and not just his apartment, shouldn’t have _implied_ what it looks like he’s implying. That there could be more, that Harry’s not allowed out in a normal restaurant, that—

“You’re not… re-creating anything, are you?”

His gaze snaps up, breath catching in his throat. Slowly, staring at Harry’s blue — guarded — gaze, he manages to force himself to say, “Harri— Dr. Wells never came here.”

And something about Harry relaxes a little, even as his mouth tugs down into a small frown. Cisco cringes, lowering his head and trying not to be disappointed. It was a stupid idea, and he never should have expected any other kind of reaction. Even though Harry isn’t Harrison, of course he wouldn’t want to come to his small little apartment and just waste time like this. Harry’s a genius, wealthy, he’s got _real work_ to do.

“Ramon—”

“I’m sorry,” he blurts. “This was a bad idea; we can just go someplace actually nice and—”

“ _Ramon_.”

His mouth snaps shut, and he looks up to meet Harry’s gaze again only to realize that he’s stepped closer, he’s reaching out, warm fingers are taking his hands and pulling them up. He freezes, unsure what to do or how to react or what to _think_.

“How about,” Harry starts, cool and measured, “you show me that drawer of menus?”

“We— We don’t have to—”

“ _Ramon_ ,” Harry presses again, and he flushes and lowers his head in shame, guilt. “Ramon, look at me.” Of course he obeys. “You’re right,” Harry says quietly. “Being in public in this world is a risk for me, and this is a better solution than hoping I’m not recognized. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

And there’s a little thread of something warm in his chest, something that makes him ease under the too-familiar but not at all familiar blue gaze and offer a tentative, small, smile.

“Really?” he asks, leaving his hands in Harry’s loose grip because he’s not sure if he actually wants to pull away just yet. Or ever, maybe. It’s kind of nice to be touched again more than just casually.

Harry’s mouth curls into a faint smile, and those long fingers squeeze down on his — firm, but not painful. “Really, Ramon. So, the menus?”

It’s a good thing that Harry lets his hands go at that point, because he’s honestly not sure he would have pulled away on his own to offer, “Yeah,” and lead the way towards his kitchen.

He can almost feel Harry following him, as he pulls out the drawer with the menus and grabs them from within. He turns, handing the pile over, and Harry takes it and immediately starts to page through.

“I can cook,” he offers, belatedly. “I’m not totally sure what’s in my fridge right now, but I’m sure I could find something. We don’t have to order anything.”

Harry looks up, mouth twisted in a small smirk. “While I’m sure your cooking is delicious, I believe the point of this was for me to take _you_ out to dinner, wasn’t it? Going to your home to eat food you cooked hardly qualifies, in my opinion.”

He hesitates, pressing his lower back against the counter. “Why wouldn’t it?”

The _look_ he gets makes him cringe just a little bit, but he forces himself not to look away from the sharp disbelief in Harry’s gaze.

“Why wouldn’t it?” Harry echoes, with that same disbelief. “Ramon, I am not going to make you do all the work for something that’s supposed to be my treat. That’s grossly unfair.” He opens his mouth to protest, and Harry sharply repeats, “It’s _not fair_. Ramon, I—” Harry cuts himself off, closing his eyes for a moment and reaching up to rub at his temples.

He waits, not sure what to say or do as Harry gives a small, bitten back sigh and then finally meets his gaze again.

“Ramon, I don’t know the specifics of whatever relationship you had with… my other self, but I want to make something clear. Until the both of us agree to anything different, we’re equals. If you _want_ to cook for me, that’s fine, but you are not my servant and I will not treat you like one. I refuse to. Do you understand that?”

He _wants_ to say ‘yes,’ to pretend that he understands the distinction that Harry is trying to make, but he can’t.

“No,” he admits instead, quietly.

Harry’s eyes close again for a moment, and then he’s stepping forward, setting the menus on the counter. Cisco tries not to move as Harry steps in front of him, but sucks in a small, startled breath when the older man pulls him into a loose embrace without even a moment of warning. He’s rigid for a second, but then can’t help melting into it, burying his head against Harry’s shoulder and letting himself be held even though he doesn’t quite dare to return it.

This, at least, he almost understands.

After a while, Harry’s grip tightens a little bit as he draws in a deeper breath to speak. “Would you rather cook?” he asks, and the question is so out of left field that Cisco jerks just a little bit.

“What?”

“Would you rather cook than order something?” Harry repeats.

He hesitates, squirms a little bit. “If it’s what you want—”

“ _No_.” He freezes, and Harry’s hand strokes the length of his back, pulling him a little closer. “I asked what _you_ want to do, Ramon. Do you want to cook, or do you want to order something in? Give me your honest answer.”

But he… he should cook, shouldn’t he? If that’s what Harry wants, if it would make him happy, shouldn’t he do that? It’s not like it’s that big of an effort, relatively. It’s not like it would be some new recipe he has to figure out, or a bunch of different dishes he would have had to prepare the pieces of beforehand to get it all done in a reasonable time. It’s just cooking, but…

But it would be nice to just be able to relax.

“Order in,” he says quietly, into Harry’s shoulder.

Harry squeezes him in what feels like an actual hug, and then murmurs, “Good,” as he eases his grip. Before he can fully dissect what that ‘good’ might mean, Harry is manually turning him around, to face the counter, and pushing the pile of menus in front of him. “Pick your favorite.”

Harry’s at his back, hands resting lightly on his shoulders, and that’s distracting enough that it takes him a little bit of time to understand the demand. Then he reaches forward, shuffling through the menus until he reaches his favorite, a Chinese restaurant that’s open pretty much all the time — he gets in at _weird_ hours sometimes — and never seems to care how disheveled or exhausted he is when he answers the door.

“This one.”

Harry’s hands slip down, picking up the menu and flipping it open in front of both of them. “Alright, tell me what you want.”

He hesitates, but finally points out a couple of things on the menu. Harry hums something like agreement, closes the menu, and finally steps back and lets him out of the not so unpleasant cage of his arms. Harry’s still holding the menu in one hand, looking down at the front cover, when he turns around.

“Give me your phone,” Harry demands, holding his free hand out.

“You’re not going to send me off for an enforced nap again, are you?” he asks, only half joking, as he hands over his phone.

Harry’s mouth flickers in a little smirk. “No, Ramon. Your number?” He rattles it off without thinking. “Thanks. Go pick out something to watch, and I’ll call this in. Sound good to you?”

It sounds kind of unbelievable, but he finds himself nodding anyway. Harry shoos him back towards the living room portion of his apartment with one hand, setting the menu down and unlocking his phone with the other. For some reason he finds himself following the silent command, heading for his TV — basically one of the nicest things in his apartment because he has his _priorities_ straight — and taking a seat on one end of the couch.

Flipping the TV on with the remote is more muscle memory than anything else, and so is navigating over to the menu for the external hard drive he keeps hooked up to it. There are the streaming services too, but those tend to be mostly TV shows and this is definitely a movie kind of a night.

Cisco’s not sure if it’s madness or some weird kind of hope that makes him page down the list to The Princess Bride. One of the best date movies, right? And… this is a date, isn’t it? At least kinda?

Sure, Harry hadn’t _said_ the word specifically, but they’d been talking about ‘less than paternal interest’ and that would imply a date, wouldn’t it? He’s _pretty sure_ it was implied, even if no one outright said it. If it’s not, well, The Princess Bride is still a good movie and he hasn’t seen it since that one semi-successful date with Kendra.

Who knows if Harry’s ever seen it? Who knows if Earth-2 even _has_ it?

He sets the remote down and twists, watching Harry as he speaks into the phone. His voice is smooth, confident, not hesitating on the order even when he gives Cisco’s name and number instead of his own. Which confuses him for all of a second before logic kicks in and reminds him that yeah, it might not be a good idea to tell the delivery guys that Harrison Wells is ordering Chinese, when that name was all over the news for awhile, both for confessing to Barry’s mother’s murder and then being missing and presumed dead.

Better safe than sorry, right?

“About twenty-five minutes,” Harry announces as he approaches, tossing Cisco his phone back in a slow, underhanded arc. He still fumbles actually catching it a little bit, but his phone doesn’t crash to the floor so he counts it a win.

“I uh, don’t know if you’ve seen this yet.” He nods towards the selected file, as Harry sits down on the couch as well, not quite all the way on the other end but with a couple of feet separating them. “It’s good though; promise.”

Harry squints a bit as he looks at the TV, and then comments, “The name doesn’t sound familiar. Perhaps it doesn’t exist on my Earth?”

“Gotta be,” he agrees instantly. “I mean, The Princess Bride is a _classic_. If it’s not a classic on your world, it must not exist. I refuse to believe there is a world where this movie is not _fantastic_.”

Harry is smiling, a little curl of lips that actually makes him fidget and duck his head in embarrassment. “I’m sure I’ll enjoy it,” the older man murmurs, and he looks back up in time to watch Harry reach towards him. He stays still as Harry tucks one of his long strands of hair back behind his ear, fingers lingering as the knuckles brush against his jaw.

There’s a moment that he’s utterly unsure what’s about to happen, and it’s almost _thrilling_.

Then Harry asks, “Would you like to start it now, or wait until the food gets here?”

He swallows. “Uh, I mean, it would be better to wait, right?” Harry watches him evenly, expression not giving away any of what he’s thinking, and it’s then that he fits this into the pattern of the night. “Oh. You want me to— Got it. Yeah, wait for food.”

He gets another of those small smiles, and it feels like a reward. So he smiles back, and tilts his head towards the warm graze of Harry’s fingers to get just a little more contact from them. One stroke of a thumb across his cheek later and he’s closing his eyes, humming satisfaction and leaning further into it.

Until Harry’s voice slips through the air in a low murmur, asking, “Come here?”

He opens his eyes again, figures out that Harry is talking about the very open section of couch underneath that long arm, against Harry’s side, and slowly nods. He shifts closer, mind racing in the hundred different directions this could go. To the pull of a hand in his hair, the hard press of lips, a tug to put him over Harry’s lap…

And then Harry _is_ tugging at him, but somehow he finds himself with his back against Harry’s side and facing away, which does not at all gel with the direction he was _pretty sure_ things were going.

“Uh…” Harry’s hands are messing with his hair; pulling it out of the braid. “Okay… That’s um… Not what I was expecting. At all.”

“And what were you expecting?” Harry asks, fingers combing through his hair and _oh_ , that’s nice.

“Well, I was kinda feeling a _mood_ and usually when _moods_ are in the air one person doesn’t just start braiding the other person’s hair. You know, generally. Unless that’s a thing on your Earth.” He squirms a little bit, and then comments, “And it’s _your_ braid, so I mean, it can’t be in that bad a shape.”

“Maybe I just like having my hands in your hair.” Harry’s voice is just a bit teasing, but the fingers lightly scratching at his scalp are still there and he can’t help leaning back into them a bit. Maybe more than a bit.

He lets that comment go unanswered for a minute, before quietly asking, “But it’s not just me, right? There was a _mood_ , wasn’t there? And you’re still interested?”

The hands in his hair slow, and then Harry gives a very soft sigh. “Yes, I’m still interested. You have no _idea_ how much you test my restraint at times, Ramon.”

“What are you restraining?” he asks, even as a dull little spark of warmth curls in his stomach. Harry’s _interested_. That probably shouldn’t make him quite as happy as it does.

Then Harry’s tugging his head sideways by his hair, and he goes with it because why wouldn’t he? Right up until he realizes that Harry’s leaning down and in, and then lips are meeting his and he sucks in a startled little gasp of breath. The kiss is soft, chaste, warm, and lingers at the same time that it’s gone _way_ too quickly. He stares up at Harry, watches those familiar blue eyes slowly open again.

“That,” Harry whispers, “and _so_ much more.”

And all he can ask is, “ _Why?_ ”

A smile flickers onto and off Harry’s face in an instant, and a second kiss is pressed to his forehead, where Harry lingers. “Because I refuse to hurt you, Ramon. Not like this.”

He smiles, that warmth flaring to life and slipping up into his chest, his throat. “Thank you,” he breathes, leaning even farther into Harry’s touch. Harry doesn’t answer, just holds him and lets him close his eyes, relaxing against his chest.

It sets the tone for the whole night. He stays mostly curled up on Harry’s chest, even during the food, as he quotes along to Princess Bride, and maybe it’s just a little embarrassing when he catches Harry watching him do it, but not enough to make him stop. Harry doesn’t seem _disappointed_ anyway, just softly amused. And every time he looks up, every time he looks to see Harry’s reaction, he gets a soft kiss. On his mouth, his forehead, his cheek… Just soft, lingering brushes of lips with no real demand behind them.

It’s probably the best night he’s had in a very long time, and by the end of it he’s thinking that maybe — just _maybe_ — this might actually be something he can have.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Who Am I? [podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13571346) by [KD reads (KDHeart)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KDHeart/pseuds/KD%20reads)




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